It Matters Who Writes the History

Andersonville was created in February 1864 and was used until April 1865 as a prison camp for Union prisoners of war. It covered an area of about 26.5 acres. During the course of the war, about 45,000 prisoners were received at Andersonville. Of this number, about 13,000 died. Poor diets, dysentery, and typhoid fever were the major causes of death.

The anti-Confederates love to blather about how bad it was at Andersonville, the infamous prisoner of war camp in Georgia, but they are deathly quiet about Camp Douglas, a Yankee prisoner of war camp in Chicago. Confederate Captain Henry Wirz was tried, convicted, and executed for war crimes after the war due to the uncontrollable conditions at Andersonville. Was Wirz to blame for the lack of food and medicine available to the prisoners? The facts are much different than what many so-called “historians” have told us.

Edward Wellington Boate was a soldier in the 42nd New York Infantry and a prisoner at Andersonville in 1864. He wrote of his experiences in the New York Times shortly after the war and commented on whom he held responsible for Andersonville’s legacy.

“You rulers who make the charge that the rebels intentionally killed off our men, when I can honestly swear they were doing everything in their power to sustain us, do not lay this flattering unction to your souls. You abandoned your brave men in the hour of their cruelest need. They fought for the Union and you reached no hand out to save the old faithful, loyal and devoted servants of the country. You may try to shift the blame from your own shoulders, but posterity will saddle the responsibility where it justly belongs.”

Gen. Grant’s Refusal for Prisoner Exchange

Lincoln’s blockade of Southern ports kept much needed medicines, known as contraband, from not only reaching the Confederate sick, but the Union prisoners of war as well. Confederate guards died at the same rate as the prisoners. In fact, Confederate guards were often given worse rations than the prisoners. Union General Ulysses S. Grant refused prisoner exchanges with the Confederacy. In an act of desperation, the Confederacy offered up prisoners with no exchange requested, but Grant refused, and therefore, sacrificed his own men. He had rather the prisoners be a burden to the South than have Confederate prisoners returned and once again take up arms against the North.

General Grant said, “If we hold these men caught they are no more than dead men. If we liberate them we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated.” General Grant wrote to General Butler on August 18, 1864, “It is hard on our men in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles.“

The Yankee invaders ravaged the countryside, burning homes, crops, and farm implements, thereby depleting the food supply. While food was in short supply in the South, giving good reason for the malnourishment of the Union prisoners, what was the excuse for starving Confederate prisoners in Yankee prison camps, where food was plentiful? Let’s look at Camp Douglas, known as “Eighty Acres of Hell.”

Camp Douglas was located on the South Side of Chicago. We are told by Union Army records that 4,454 Confederate prisoners died there. The actual number is estimated at more than 5,600. According to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, 6,000 graves are in the cemetery there. In this Northern prison camp, prisoners were intentionally starved, and denied adequate clothing and heating as acts of punishment. The capacity of the prison was 6,000, but 12,000 were crammed into it. By early 1863, the rate of death was over 10 percent per month. Torture, including hanging men by their thumbs for hours, and “Riding Morgan’s Mule,” which consisted of sitting on a narrow and sharpened edge of a horizontal two-by-four suspended from four to twelve feet off the ground. Guards would hang buckets of dirt and rock from a prisoner’s feet to increase the pain.

The death rate for Union prisoners was 8.4 percent, while it was 11.9 percent for Confederate prisoners.

Official U.S. Policy on Confederate POWs

“Rebel prisoners in our hands are to be subjected to a treatment finding its parallels only in the conduct of savage tribes and resulting in the death of multitudes by the slow but designed process of starvation and by mortal diseases occasioned by insufficient and unhealthy food and wanton exposure of their persons to the inclemency of the weather.” 

Preamble to the H.R. 97, passed by both Houses, January 1865

Captain Wirz was executed for conditions beyond his control, while the Yankees faced no charges for the intentional cruelty of Confederate prisoners. 

It really does matter who writes the history.

-By Jeff Paulk,
Oklahoma Division Commander
Sons of Confederate Veterans